(HealthDayNews) -- No matter how discriminating you think your palate is, the sad truth is that you're no better at deciding what tastes good than the rest of us.
Most of our 3,000 taste buds are on the back, front and sides of the upper part of our tongue, and we can only detect four basic tastes -- sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Which of those four are you most sensitive to? Bitterness, by far. You can detect a bitter taste at a dilution of one part per 2 million. Despite your appetite, any sweets diluted more than one part in 200 will go undetected. In between the two extremes, you'll taste sourness at a dilution up to one in 130,000 parts and salty at one in 400.
Dilution is the key to taste, because you can't detect anything if it's dry. Nothing solid can be tasted unless some part of it is dissolved, usually by saliva.
So how do you discern the difference between bordelaise and mayonnaise? Mostly with your sense of smell, which is 25,000 times more powerful than your sense of taste.
